Page 1 of Quarter Labyrinth

ONE

The sky turned violet as the countdown in my head reached its end.

Two.

One.

Zero.

The countdown had been running for sixteen years, ever since my father hid his wife and newborn upon this sequestered island with the last of his coins and a promise to return for us.

Tonight he would make good on that promise. On the eve of my sixteenth birthday, as the sun left thesea, he would return and reveal his wife and daughter to the world—or so his letters claimed. We would join his fleet and he’d officially announce me as his heir. With one word from him, our lives would begin.

The sun had left the sea. It was time.

I perched on the rocky bank beside Mama, our eyes trained upon the horizon. The seas were restless tonight, almost like they felt the tumbling of my heart, or the roaring of blood in my veins. I didn’t want to blink for fear that I’d miss Father’s coming ship.

“With every ripple, I think it’s his green flags.” I had to squint to see in the dying light. “The wind is against him tonight, so his sails will need to be dropped to make it through the pass, but the flag will be up.”

“The seas were against us the night we arrived.” In Mama’s voice, I heard a thousand memories. She wrapped her arms around her knees while her silky blue scarf trailed in the northbound wind, her gaze pinned to the water. As desperately as I wished to meet my father, she’d been waiting an equally long time to see her husband again. She shivered against the night, but her voice remained strong as she said, “We had to dump everything and row with all our might to make it past the rocks.”

Father was a stronger sailor now. Back then, he’d been an up-and-coming merchant with dreams of an empire. Now he controlled the most renowned fleet, the Silver Wings, and held exclusive rights to the coveted trade route between the islands, nicknamed the Shallows. The Shallows passed through the more populated areas in the Hundred Islands, where markets were busiest and fares were highest, and one-tenth of all coin went into Father’s pockets because he was the only one with rights to sailthere. The waters between islands were too narrow to allow many ships through, so all who didn’t hold the rights to that route had to take a longer path around the outer islands and dock at different ports.

It was an honor to hold the Shallows.

According to Father’s letters that I kept in a trunk beneath my bed, the Shallows and the Silver Wings fleet would one day be mine.

“Just think. By sunrise, we will be dining with the rest of the fleet, and I’ll stay at the helm by Father’s side, showing him all I have learned.” I’d replayed the image in my head so many times, it almost felt like a memory instead of a wish.

Father had never publicly declared an heir. Tonight, he would.

A voice shouted in the distance, but not from the sea. Clark came running down the rocky shore, his long legs tripping along every rock as he aimed for us. He crossed the wet stones, almost slipping twice, until finally making it to the jetty.

Clark crouched beside me and dug his fingers into whatever purchase they could find while his knuckles turned white. “Did I miss it?”

“I’d be gone if you missed it.”

He quieted at that. Mother shot me a look.

Be kind, her eyes seemed to say.

Fine. “I would have said goodbye before I left,” I added.

She nodded in approval, while Clark grinned. It was probably the truth, anyway. Clark had been my closest friend on this island, and the only one to know who my father was. Allothers got some sad story about a wayward sailor who’d abandoned us without a care, but Clark knew the truth. My father was Gerald Montclair, wealthiest merchant in the Hundred Islands, and he hid us for our protection against those who would seek to undermine his business by stealing us away. They’d already tried once. It’s why we had to be so secretive now, and why we were left on an island surrounded by sharp rocks and uncertain waters, and why we couldn’t tell anyone who we belonged to.

Only Clark had earned our trust enough to tell him our secret.

I’d only told him so he understood my leaving was inevitable. While I’d been counting down until I could leave, he’d been counting down how many days we had left.

“You’re really going to go,” Clark whispered.

I clutched Father’s note in my hand, the one with his promise to return.

“My place in the world is out there.” I refocused on the horizon, at the slip of sea running between jagged rocks where we’d first come to this forsaken place. To protect our relation to Father, we couldn’t send letters. But coded notes from him came as often as he could post them.

The days of hoarding his letters were over. Our relationship would be counted in memories now, not words. “I’m meant to be at his side.”

I gave Clark a sidelong glance, enough to see the tight draw of his shoulders and the way his lip pulled between his teeth. He was like the ocean mist, a stumbling thing disrupted by any wind, but beautiful in a certain light, and a constant I could depend on.My heart had no right to be sorry to leave Clark, not when I’d always known what my path would be. I never let myself fall in love with him. I’d stuffed my head so thoroughly with dreams of a life with my father that it had no room for anything else.

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